"Not from this president," [George Bush] said brusquely in a taped interview on ABC's "This Week With David Brinkley" aired yesterday. "War is hell," but President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs "spared millions of American lives," Bush said.

Bush said Pearl Harbor isn't in the back of his mind these days when he sits down with the leaders of Japan. "I'm over that, and I think most Americans are or should be over that," Bush said. "We have an unhappy trade imbalance with them now. It has improved," he said, but "we've got a long way to go."

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